July 28, 2014

Cutting Through the Crap

As many of you know the media campaign against Israel by Hamas supporters has been plagued by recycled images posted as if they are happening today.

I think many Hamas propagandists and Israel haters don't really care that they are spinning lies, half truths and recycled images of other conflicts as "atrocities" committed against the Palestinians in the ongoing conflict.

I think they know they are inciting hatred with lies, they just don't care.

But for those of us interested in accuracy this presents a problem, not only in the Israel vs Hamas conflict but in other conflicts. Last week ISIS demanded that Christians in Mosul either pay the Jizya, flee or die. Various interviews of Christian fleeing Mosul indicted that ISIS was not only forcing them to feel, but robbing the refugees and also helping themselves to their property before blowing up their houses.

A copy of the Fatwa directing Christians to flee added some other details, for instance that ISIS had ordered all women in the area to undergo Female Genital Mutilation. The pact looked authentic and has many details of the Dhimmi pact that made sense as well as the ISIS logo. It turn out it was a fake probably circulated by Iran.

Well now there is an attempt to crowd source the effort to separate fact from fiction, a website called CITIZEN EVIDENCE LAB has been started by Amnesty International so that people can submit images and videos and they others can help fact check or find the original origin of these videos and images.

Its like an automated Dr. Rusty Shackleford.

A worthwhile project for sure. So well see how it work out. Hopefully it will help us cut through the fog of propaganda and get more accurate reports on what comes from where.